The friction between politics and pure science

The creation of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council in 1978 was the culmination of nearly 20 years of revisions and reviews of the federal government’s science and science policy capacities.

During the process the chief scientific adviser to cabinet, Robert Uffen, quietly resigned in 1971, and the first chairman of the Science Council, Omond Solandt, publicly blasted the government’s direction in 1975. The issue would be familiar to anyone watching the current dispute between scientists and politicians: Uffen and Solandt believed the federal government did not respect the wisdom of scientists, and that it was creating the means to interfere politically in the scientific process for short-term economic reasons.

Uffen and Solandt were both former chairmen of the Defence Research Board. The DRB, like its older sibling the National Research Council, controlled the intramural research of a handful of establishments spread across the country, and an extramural research budget for grants and contracts with universities and industries. Through the board, council, committee and panel structure, the Defence Research Board brought together military clients, with government researchers, university scientists and industry leaders, to share advice and make decisions. The process of leaving science policy, advisory and administration to scientists and stakeholders, and giving the managing scientist direct access to a cabinet minister, was the ideal situation in the experience of Solandt and Uffen.

However, this style of managing science — created in the First World War and highly successful in the Second World War under the leadership of two engineers, C.J. Mackenzie and C.D. Howe — was called into question by the Royal Commission on Government Organization in its 1962-63 reports. The main issue for J. Grant Glassco and the other commissioners was the real and perceived lack of impartiality when advisory and administration responsibilities are handled by the same people. Glassco’s experience was in the business world, and no business ran this way.

Glassco suggested that the National Research Council could not continue to act as the scientific adviser to cabinet, so he recommended that science advice should be handled by two groups: a Science Secretariat within the government, and an external Science Council, and that neither of those groups should be responsible for the administration of funding for science.

Glassco’s recommendations were made for the Diefenbaker government, which lost the 1963 election. Newly-elected Lester Pearson turned to the venerable Mackenzie for a second opinion, likely over lunch at the Rideau Club. Mackenzie then wrote a short paper in which he demanded that the Science Secretariat report to cabinet instead of the Treasury Board, but otherwise he agreed with Glassco. The two bodies were created in 1964 and 1966, and immediately collaborated to write several influential reports — including the two that led to the creation of the Department of Communications.

Having separated advisory and administration functions, the next step for the government was to subdivide administration. In 1967 the Special Committee on Science Policy was created under the leadership of Senator Maurice Lamontagne; it was tasked with a review of science in the federal government, particularly the administration of grants and contracts.

Roger Gaudry noted as a member of the Defence Research Board how difficult it was for scientists at francophone universities to win grants if they were not represented on committees — and how difficult it was to get on committees if they did not win grants.

There were two very real problems with the way the government handled its grants and contracts. The first problem was duplication. As admirable as Wilfred Bigelow’s pioneering work on open-heart surgery and the pacemaker was, there was no reason for it to be funded by both the National Research Council and the Defence Research Board. Bigelow was not the only one to double-dip. The government created the Medical Research Council in 1960 to avoid duplication, and Lamontagne set out to reduce duplication in other fields.

The second problem with the way the government handled grants and contracts was the nepotistic nature of the committees and panels that awarded grants. To be invited to serve on the committee to award grants and contracts a researcher had to have a history of research excellence, demonstrated by previous grants or the strong recommendation of the other committee members. Prior to joining the Science Council, Roger Gaudry noted as a member of the Defence Research Board how difficult it was for scientists at francophone universities to win grants if they were not represented on committees — and how difficult it was to get on committees if they did not win grants. The system worked for those who were in the club, and didn’t for everyone else.

The solution to these problems was the creation of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 1978. This meant that scientific responsibilities, previously handled largely by the National Research Council and Defence Research Board, were now shared widely. Advising was the purview of the Ministry of State for Science and Technology (the Science Secretariat’s replacement in 1971) and the Science Council. Grants were administered by the tri-council, and government research continued to be managed within each department with vaguely-defined coordination from the Ministry of State for Science and Technology.

This diffusion of responsibilities had foreseeable problems that outraged Solandt and Uffen. The Ministry of State for Science and Technology was doomed to weakness; its limited budget meant that it would be handled by junior cabinet members with other ambitions, or senior cabinet members with other responsibilities. The Science Council, as an external body, was likely only to serve at the government’s whim, which inevitably was going to diminish with each election. Finally, the separation of intramural and extramural research robbed university and government scientists of useful avenues for communication and collaboration, which they had been afforded when they served on committees and panels to determine the funding priorities of intramural and extramural research.

Uffen timed his departure from the federal government to coincide with the creation of the Ministry of State for Science and Technology, so that it would appear amicable. He refused to join Solandt’s public criticism.

Solandt raised some of the issues with the federal government’s decisions as they pertained to the Defence Research Board, which the government reorganized in 1974 in spite of recommendations from Uffen and Solandt. He wrote an article in the October 1975 Science Forum, a short-lived magazine dedicated to science and science policy issues in Canada. Science Forum extended an invitation to the government to respond to Solandt’s criticisms and it was written by Minister of State for Science and Technology, C.M. ‘Bud’ Drury.

Drury explained the populist reason why the government had increased political control of science, and distanced itself from scientific advisers. “The Canadian public has, in recent years, become more sophisticated in its approach to science and less inclined to accept all scientific advances with uncritical enthusiasm.” Drury knew public opinion had shifted since the Second World War and scientists were being viewed — like everyone else who wanted to spend government funds – warily.

Drury continued with a justification for why and how the government was going to continue to support science: “While it is accepted that, in the national interest, the federal government should support … research, there is now a substantial body of opinion to the effect that the emphasis should be on dedicating a greater share of Canada’s already significant scientific potential to the solution of national problems. The essence of this approach to science policy is that science is a means of achieving … economic … objectives …

Loathe as the current government would be to have comparisons drawn to Pierre Trudeau’s government, they are certainly there. Then, as now, a plurality of Canadians wanted to benefit from advances in science and technology — but in a time of austerity, that plurality was not willing to fund expensive, esoteric, pure research.

“Science is a means and not an end. The level of funding provided for a specific departmental program will relate to the importance that the government attaches to the achievement of the objective. In other words, within a department, science and technology must compete for funds with alternative means of meeting objectives … The development of a significant technological capacity in industry will receive increasing emphasis in the future.”

If you precede every instance of “government” with “Harper” or “Conservative” rather than “federal,” and you pretend that the ellipses contain non-sequitur references to coalitions or the economic action plan, then you could easily believe this was pulled straight from the talking points of an eloquent Conservative MP. Loathe as the current government would be to have comparisons drawn to Pierre Trudeau’s government, they are certainly there. Then, as now, a plurality of Canadians wanted to benefit from advances in science and technology — but in a time of austerity, that plurality was not willing to fund expensive, esoteric, pure research.

In 1975 Solandt and Uffen had the kind of influence within the federal government that scientists now can only dream of, but it was not enough to prevent or reverse any of the government’s decisions. The only thing that might have saved the structures that Solandt and Uffen believed were the best way of managing science was the second coming of C.D. Howe. Even that might not have worked.

Current scientists, and experts in general, would trip over themselves to have a minister as reasonable as Drury — someone who engages with them, rather than undermining and ignoring them.

Jonathan Turner is a historian who specializes in Canadian science and technology. His current book project is a history of the Defence Research Board.

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